Merry Christmas-pudding!

Merry Christmas and a Happy 2010!

Speculaas

To celebrate Sinterklaasfeest, I’ve baked some Gevuld Speculaas. Not much to celebrate, but it is a good excuse to prepare this delicious Dutch pastry. It is a spiced biscuit filled with an almond paste.

Gevuld Speculaas on the left.

Australia-shaped speculaasjes made with the leftover dough.

Sinterklaas is a traditional Winter holiday figure in the Netherlands, Aruba, Suriname, Netherlands Antilles and Belgium, celebrated every year on Saint Nicholas' eve (December 5). The feast celebrates the name day of Saint Nicholas, patron saint of, among other things, children.

Sinterklaas has a long red cape, wears a white bishop's dress and red mitre and holds a crosier, a long gold coloured staff with a fancy curled top. He carries a big book that tells whether each individual child has been good or naughty in the past year. He traditionally rides a white horse.

Summer again - 4WD’n

Summer is here (officially December 1st) so time to get the camping gear out again. We already had 2 short trips in spring which were a bit rainy, but this time things looked good.

On Thursday right after work we left for Goulburn where we stayed overnight in a motel, the next morning it was off to Braidwood to meet up with our fellow campers. After a coffee, some pastries and the last use of the toilet facilities we went off into Deua National Park. As temperatures raised to 41°C we followed a challenging track for about 6 hours to the Bendethera campsite.  We found a nice spot near the river to set up camp.

Saturday we did a bushwalk to the Bendethera caves, still a very warm day but with a cool-down stop in the caves it was bearable. Sunday was time to pack up and dive back home!

Braidwood Bakery	Letting down the tyres to bush-pressure
Crossing Deua river	Dusty conditions
Bendethera fire trail	Monitor Lizard (goanna)
Hans cooking breakfast	The whole crew

 
Red Bellied Black Snake, ieeeuw

Mexican Riviera

Booked and arranged a long long time ago was a cruise with our Dutch friends from Los Angeles to Mexico and back. We met up with the guys in LA and the next day we sailed off on the Royal Caribbean Mariner of the Seas.

Because of Hurricane Rick in the area, captain Johnny had to change the plans a bit, but he sailed us through the heavy weather without problems. The ship went to port in Puerto Vallarta and Cabo San Lucas (we had to skip the stop in Mazatlan).

The Mariner of the Seas	The guys
Dance party at the pool deck	Another dance party in “Studio B”
Decorating your Stateroom-door is part of the experience.	View of the Royal Promenade
Dolphin Encounter in Cabo San Lucas	Cheers

After a great week with parties, dinners and time to catch up with our friends, it was time to head back to Sydney. We had a couple of hours to spare before our flight back, so we had a look in Santa Monica and Venice Beach.

Santa Monica Pier

Bangkok - กรุงเทพมหานคร

It was good catching up with everyone in Amsterdam, but time had come to head back in the direction of Australia. On the way back we had a stopover planned in Bangkok for 5 days.

We had a great time and have already planned our next trip to this wonderful vibrant, buzzing and very cheap city.

Shopping in MBK	Very weird ice cream
Streetfood & Singha beer	Dried Squid, cheap !

Wat

There is more in Thailand than food… you guessed it… Temples. We took the very efficient SkyTrain and the less-efficient river ferry service to Wat Pho (วัดโพธิ์), the temple of the Reclining Buddha. Wat Pho is the one of the largest and oldest temples in Bangkok and is home to more than one thousand Buddha images, as well as one of the largest single Buddha images: the Reclining Buddha, the Reclining Buddha is forty-six metres long and fifteen metres high, decorated with gold plating on his body and mother of pearl on his eyes and the soles of his feet.

46m of gold	The feet with the inlay of mother of pearl
nice ‘n easy	Hans donating a roof-tile to the restorations of the temple.

Close to Wat Pho is the Grand Palace. The Grand Palace is a complex of buildings in Bangkok, Thailand. It served as the official residence of the Kings of Thailand from the 18th century onwards.

The Palace
	Stray pussycat, always taken good care of by Buddhists

 

Food

More food… A Korean-bbq type of cooking, but with Thai ingredients.	Of course the menu is only in Thai.. so you need some help. And you have to write down your own orders on a post-it.
You eat inside, but the kitchen is out on the street. At least no smelly curtains.	The mystery order came out well!
With our friend Ayre at the night markets.	The night markets at Memorial Bridge.

Amsterdam

Because we have our best friends Harald & Danny’s wedding to attend next weekend in Amsterdam, we took off for a trip back to Europe. Luckily we were able upgrade our flight on points from Sydney to Singapore on Qantas. Singapore-Amsterdam on KLM was back in cattle-class unfortunately, but some sleeping got us through the 24hrs of travel.

  
Hans in seat 13J

We arrived on Sunday morning at 6am and after some coffee and freshing up we met the familiy first. After that we headed to Amsterdam to check into the spare room at Harald & Danny.

Uncle Arjan

Elmo looks scared but he wasn't, maybe he still recognised me ?

Of course we had to go and eat some Dutch Kroket (Croquette) and meet up with all our friends.

a FEBO Kroket

dinner with friends

We also met up with our parents again and we had a very nice dinner in Leiden.

Famous

We appeared in an article about the Drive4Life tour in the July edition of Overlander Magazine.

For those not in Australia, ask me for a scanned version of the article. The ozzies can find the magazine at their local Newsagent.

Drive4Life

From Sunday 19th April 2009 till Friday 24th April 2009 we participated in the Drive4Life fundraiser tour. The objective of Drive4Life is to raise funds for Northcott disability services, a leader in the support and service provision for children and young adults with disabilities and their families. They do so by conducting "tag-along" four wheel drive tours. Participants in the tour make a tax-deductable donation of AU$ 1.000, every cent of which goes directly to the charity. Sponsors pay for the additional funds needed to organise the trip itself.

Albury

With the car fully checked and packed up we left on Friday afternoon and set course for Albury, NSW where we spent the night. Albury has an interesting link with The Netherlands, which was why we chose this town as a stop.

In 1934 the MacRobertson Trophy Air Race took place, from London to Melbourne. The Dutch KLM aircraft De Uiver took part in this air race. Nearing the end of the race the Uiver, hopelessly lost after becoming caught in a thunderstorm, ended up over Albury, New South Wales. The townsfolk responded magnificently, they helped the lost plane by signalled "Albury" by turning the town lights on and off. They lined their cars on the local racecourse to light up a runway for the plane. The plane landed, and next morning was pulled out of the mud by locals to fly on and win the handicap section of the race.

At Albury Airport there is a Memorial, however the DC2 replica is no longer there and the memorial is in state of disrepair.

Gundagai with the first truss bridge built in Australia	The Uiver Memorial
The Uiver replica, parked at a remote part of the airport instead of near the Memorial.	Albury by night

After the stopover in Albury we set course for Harrietville, the starting point of our tour. We checked into the local motel and gathered with all the participants to be assigned to our groups and meet the group leaders. The car and equipment were checked and we put the drive4life stickers on the doors of the car.

After that it was time for a beer at the Snowline Hotel to have a chat with the others in our group.

Day 1

An early start to gather for the group photo. It took a bit of manoeuvring to get all the cars and participants positioned for a good photo. After that we could really start the tour.

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Group photo

We arrived at the Horseyard flat campground around to put up the tent and gather wood for the campfire, as soon as the sun set, it became quite cold and it proved to be an even colder night.

 

Day 2

Cold! There was ice everywhere when we woke up, on the car, on the tent and on the grass. Is this Australia? Overnight we reached -6°C, lucky we bought warm sleeping bags.

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Yes a very cold morning	Coffee break, we Europeans don't drink instant coffee.

 

Day 3

Day 3 took us from the Wonnangatta campground to Talbotville. A very nice day.

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Group 3, our group	Wonnangatta Cemetery
	Carwash

 

Day 4

Day 4 we are staying at Talbotville, so no need to pack up the tent. We visited the old goldmine area and had a meal at the Dargo Hotel, a very small town in the High Country.

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Good hope Gold mine
Dusty conditions

 

Day 5

Day 5 took us from Talbotville back to Harrietville through some land that was affected by the bushfires about 2 months ago. It was a very eerie landscape, all the trees looked like burnt matches. After the return in Harrietville it was time for a shower. That night the locals prepared a BBQ for us. There was a presentation by the organisers, the cheque was handed over to Northcott and there was a party with a band. The next morning we drove all the way back to Sydney in one go.

We had a fantastic time and a great bunch of people in our group!

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Back in Harrietville	Cheers!